FBAR and FATCA reporting for Americans in the UK: the complete guide

You must file an FBAR if you are a US person with a financial interest in, or signature authority over, foreign financial accounts worth more than $10,000 in total at any point in the calendar year. You must file Form 8938 if you are a specified individual who has to file a US tax return and your specified foreign financial assets exceed the threshold for your filing status and country of residence. The two definitions of who is caught are close but not identical.

Who is a US person for the FBAR?

A US person for FBAR purposes is a US citizen, a US resident, or an entity, trust or estate formed under US law. Citizens are covered wherever they live and however long they have been away. That includes dual nationals, people born in the US who left as infants, and children born abroad who acquired citizenship through an American parent.

A resident is anyone who meets the tax residency tests in section 7701(b) of the tax code: green card holders, and people who meet the substantial presence test. So a British national who has moved to New York on a work visa and kept a Barclays account and a pension at home is an FBAR filer too. This guide speaks mainly to Americans in Britain, but the rules run both ways.

US limited liability companies, corporations, partnerships and trusts file in their own right. A single-member LLC that the tax code ignores still files its own FBAR if it holds a UK account, because the FBAR does not follow tax classification. The FinCEN line item filing instructions say so in terms.

Who is a specified individual for Form 8938?

A specified individual is a US citizen, a resident alien for any part of the year, or a non-resident alien who elects to be treated as a resident in order to file a joint return. Two differences from the FBAR matter in practice.

• No return, no Form 8938. If your income is below the filing threshold and you do not have to file a Form 1040, you do not file Form 8938, whatever your assets are worth. The FBAR has no such exception. A retired spouse with no income and £9,000 in a joint account can owe an FBAR and nothing else.
• Treaty residents of the UK. A green card holder who claims UK residence under the treaty tie-breaker for the whole year, files Form 1040-NR and attaches Form 8833 is not a specified individual for that year. The FBAR is generally understood to apply regardless, because it uses the statutory residency test without the treaty override. Claiming the tie-breaker has serious immigration and exit-tax consequences, so do not take that step for reporting reasons. Our guide to the US-UK double taxation treaty explains the tie-breaker.

Your British spouse is neither a US person nor a specified individual unless they hold a green card, meet the presence test or elect to file jointly with you. Joint accounts are a separate question, covered below.

Do children have to file?

Yes. A child who is a US citizen is a US person, and the FBAR instructions say plainly that a child is responsible for their own report. Where the child is too young to file, a parent or guardian files and signs for them, entering "Parent/Guardian filing for child" as the filer title. The $10,000 test is applied to the child's own accounts: a Junior ISA, a child trust fund, a children's savings account and any Premium Bonds in their name.

Form 8938 follows the tax return. A child files it only if they must file a Form 1040 and their assets pass the threshold. If you elect to report your child's investment income on your own return using Form 8814, you are treated as holding their foreign assets for Form 8938 purposes.

Check the citizenship first. A child born in the UK to one American parent is a citizen from birth only if that parent meets the physical presence conditions for passing citizenship on. Many parents assume the answer either way without checking.

What about "accidental Americans"?

The rules make no distinction. If you are a citizen, you are a US person for both regimes, even if you have never held a US passport or a Social Security number. In our experience this group usually finds out when a UK bank asks about a US place of birth. The fix is orderly and usually penalty-free; see the section on missed years.

The FBAR filing requirement is triggered when the combined value of all your foreign financial accounts exceeds $10,000 at any time during the calendar year. It is one test across every account, not a test per account, and it looks at the high point of the year, not the closing balance. Once you are over, you report every account, including the ones with almost nothing in them.

The four rules that catch people out

• It is aggregate. Five accounts with £2,000 each put you over.
• It is the peak. A balance that touches the line for one day counts, even if the account is empty on 31 December.
• It includes accounts that are not yours. Accounts you can sign on count towards your total, at full value.
• It has never been indexed. The figure has stood at $10,000 since the 1970s. The penalties are adjusted for inflation; the threshold is not.

How you do the sum

The instructions tell you to find the maximum value of each account during the year, convert each to dollars at the Treasury rate for 31 December, and add them together. If the total is more than $10,000, you file. If it is exactly $10,000 or less, you do not.

This method adds up each account's own high point, even where those high points fell on different days. That can count the same money twice. It is how the form works, and we follow it.

Worked example: three small accounts

Take an example. Priya is a US citizen living in Leeds. In 2025 her current account peaked at £3,900 just after payday in June. Her cash ISA reached £2,400 in December. She holds £1,500 of Premium Bonds. No single figure looks reportable.

The Treasury rate for 31 December 2025 was 0.743 pounds to the dollar. Dividing each peak by 0.743 and rounding up gives $5,249, $3,231 and $2,019. The total is $10,499. Priya must file an FBAR for 2025 listing all three accounts. She owes no tax or fee with it.

Worked example: money that only passed through

Suppose James, a US citizen in Bristol, keeps about £1,500 in his current account and has no other savings. In March his mother gives him £7,000 towards a car, which sits in the account for four days before he pays the dealer. The peak is £8,500, which is $11,441 at the 2025 year-end rate. He files for 2025, although his balance was under £2,000 for 361 days of the year.

Worked example: the same money counted twice

Suppose Elena has £6,000 in a savings account and moves all of it into a new account with a better rate in September. The first account's maximum is £6,000. So is the second's. Added together that is £12,000, or $16,151, although she never had more than £6,000. Read strictly, the regulation asks about aggregate value "at any time", and she was never over. The form's own method says file. Filing costs nothing and removes the argument, so the cautious course is to file.

Exchange rates can push you over on their own

Because you convert at the year-end rate, a stronger pound makes the same balance worth more dollars. At the 31 December 2024 Treasury rate of 0.797, £7,800 was $9,787. At the 2025 rate of 0.743 the same £7,800 is $10,498. An unchanged balance crossed the line. If you were just under in earlier years, test again every January.

If you are not sure whether you crossed it

File. A report that was not strictly required has no cost and no downside. A missing report that was required carries a penalty. Where you hold fewer than 25 accounts and truly cannot determine whether the total passed $10,000, the form has an "amount unknown" box for each account, and you still file.

A financial interest means the account is yours, in your name or held for you by someone else; signature authority means you can tell the bank what to do with an account that belongs to another person or a business. The FBAR requires you to report both. Form 8938 covers only assets you have an interest in, so signature-only accounts stay off it.

When you have a financial interest

You have a financial interest in an account if you are the owner of record or hold legal title, whether the money is for your benefit or someone else's. You also have one where the owner of record is acting for you: an agent, nominee or attorney holding the account on your behalf. And you are treated as having one through entities you control:

• a company in which you own, directly or indirectly, more than 50% of the voting power or the value of the shares;
• a partnership in which you own more than 50% of the profits or capital;
• a trust of which you are the grantor and are treated as the owner for US tax purposes;
• a trust in which you have a present beneficial interest in more than 50% of the assets, or from which you receive more than 50% of the current income.

So if you own 60% of a UK limited company, the company's business bank account goes on your personal FBAR, at its full value, in the part of the form for accounts held through an entity.

When you have signature authority

Signature authority is the authority of an individual, alone or with someone else, to control the disposition of assets in an account by communicating directly with the institution that holds it. The test is whether the bank will act on your instruction. It does not matter whether you have ever used the power. If two signatures are needed and yours is one of them, you have it.

Common UK cases are:

• a finance director, bookkeeper or office manager on the employer's bank mandate;
• a treasurer or trustee of a charity, club, school parent association or church;
• an adult child added to an elderly parent's account, or holding a registered lasting power of attorney that the bank has on file;
• a trustee of a family trust;
• a parent who operates a child's account.

You report these in Part IV of the form, with the owner's name and address and your title. The full value counts towards your own $10,000 test. If you have signature authority over a parent's £40,000 savings account and nothing else, you file.

Employees with authority over an employer's accounts

An employee or officer who can sign on the employer's foreign accounts, and has no ownership stake, must generally report them. The regulation carves out a few groups: officers and employees of US banks examined by federal regulators, of institutions registered with the SEC or CFTC, of companies with shares listed on a US national securities exchange, and of US subsidiaries of such companies where the parent files a consolidated FBAR.

Those exceptions do not reach an American working for a UK private company, a UK-listed plc, a UK charity or a partnership. If you are on the bank mandate there, the accounts go on your FBAR each year. You do not have to keep the account records personally; the instructions relieve an employee of that. You do need the account numbers, the bank's address and the highest balance, so ask your finance team early.

The FinCEN signature-authority extension, as it stands

FinCEN has extended the filing date for one narrow group every year since 2011. The latest notice, FinCEN Notice FIN-2025-NTC3 of 8 December 2025, moves the due date to 15 April 2027 for signature authority held during calendar year 2025 and for all years covered by the earlier notices. It applies to certain officers and employees of the regulated and listed entities described above, and of registered investment advisers, who have signature authority but no financial interest. The reason given is that a rule FinCEN proposed in March 2016 to rewrite these exemptions has still not been finalised.

The notice states that for all other individuals the due date remains 15 April 2026. If you work for an ordinary UK employer, the extension is not for you.

Joint accounts with a non-US spouse

A joint account goes on your FBAR at its full value, not half, whoever paid the money in. Each joint owner who is a US person reports the whole balance. Your British spouse has no filing duty of their own, but the form asks for the number of joint owners and the name and address of the principal one, so their details appear on your report. Many spouses dislike this. It is not optional.

Form 8938 takes the same line: where you own an asset jointly with someone who is not a specified individual, you include its full value. If privacy matters to your household, the usual answer is for the non-US spouse to keep savings in their sole name, on which you hold no mandate. That works only if you truly have no authority over the account. It also has UK and US tax consequences, since income follows ownership, so decide it with advice and not for reporting reasons alone.

Two US spouses

Where both of you are US persons, one FBAR can cover both only if every account the second spouse must report is jointly owned with the first, the first files on time, and you have both signed FinCEN Form 114a. If either of you has a single account in sole name, you each file separately and each report the joint accounts in full.

Almost every UK account that holds cash or investments for you goes on the FBAR, and on Form 8938 if you are over its threshold. The test is whether a financial institution outside the United States maintains an account for you. How the UK taxes the account, and whether your provider reports it under FATCA, make no difference.

The table gives the position for everyday accounts and investments. Pensions, share plans, insurance, companies and trusts follow in the next section.

Current accounts, savings and ISAs

These are the clearest cases. A current account, an instant-access saver, a notice account and a fixed-rate bond are all bank accounts. An ISA is simply an account with a tax wrapper the US does not recognise. The UK government's ISA rules make the income and gains tax free in the UK. On your US return the interest, dividends and gains are taxable in the year they arise, and the account is reportable.

A Lifetime ISA is reported like any other ISA. The 25% government bonus is not addressed in any IRS guidance; the common treatment is to include it as income when it is credited. Each ISA with each provider is a separate account on the form. If you transferred an ISA between providers during the year, both the old and the new account are listed.

Junior ISAs and child trust funds

A Junior ISA belongs to the child. If the child is a US citizen, it goes on the child's FBAR once the child's own accounts pass $10,000. If the child is not a US person but you, the American parent, are the registered contact who gives the provider instructions, there is a reasonable argument that you have signature authority. Guidance does not settle the point, because a registered contact cannot normally withdraw the money. The cautious approach is to list it in Part IV.

Premium Bonds and NS&I products

NS&I Direct Saver, Income Bonds and similar products are deposit accounts with a government-backed savings institution and are reportable. Premium Bonds are where practitioners disagree. One view is that they are a lottery-linked government security held directly, more like a savings certificate than an account. The other is that you hold them in a numbered NS&I account, can cash them in at face value on demand, and that NS&I is a deposit-taking financial agency. Neither FinCEN nor the IRS has ruled on them by name.

We take the cautious view and report the holding at face value. Over-reporting has no penalty. Prizes are taxable on your US return, although the UK does not tax them.

Investment platforms and general investment accounts

An account with a UK platform or stockbroker is a securities account. You report the account once, at its highest total value. You do not list the funds and shares inside it on either form. The holdings matter for a different reason: UK-domiciled funds, investment trusts and exchange-traded funds are almost always passive foreign investment companies, which need Form 8621. See our PFIC reporting service.

Fintech, e-money and PayPal

Monzo, Starling and similar firms hold UK banking licences, so their accounts are bank accounts without argument. E-money institutions are less clear. They are not banks, and the money is safeguarded, not deposited. But the FBAR definition reaches any account with a "person performing the services of a financial institution", and an app that holds a balance for you, gives you account details and makes payments on your instruction fits that description comfortably. We report them.

Two practical points. First, find out which company holds your account. A Wise or Revolut account opened as a US resident is usually with the US entity and is not foreign. One opened as a UK resident is with the UK entity and is. Second, a multi-currency account is normally reported as one account with one combined maximum, converted currency by currency, unless the provider issues separate account numbers that you would list separately.

PayPal follows the same logic. A balance in a UK PayPal account is held by a UK-regulated entity, so the cautious course is to report it if you keep money there. An account that only passes card payments through, with no balance, will show a maximum of nil or a few pounds.

Cryptocurrency on foreign exchanges

A foreign account that holds only virtual currency is not currently reportable on the FBAR. That is FinCEN's stated position in FinCEN Notice 2020-2, which also says FinCEN intends to amend the regulations to bring such accounts in. As far as we can establish, no amending rule had been finalised by October 2026. The exception matters: if the exchange account also holds pounds, euros or securities, it is reportable for that reason, and you report the whole account.

Form 8938 is unsettled. The IRS has not said in terms whether crypto on a foreign exchange is a specified foreign financial asset. Where you are over the Form 8938 threshold, the cautious course is to include it. Coins in a wallet whose keys you hold yourself are not in an account anywhere. All disposals go on your return regardless, and Form 1040 asks every filer a digital assets question.

Gold, safe deposit boxes and property

Assets you hold directly are outside both forms. That covers gold coins or bars at home or in a safe deposit box, jewellery, art, cars, cash in a drawer and the title to your house. The IRS confirms the position for Form 8938 in its basic questions and answers on Form 8938. Metal held for you by a bullion dealer or vaulting service in an online account is different: there is an account, with an institution, that you instruct. Treat that as reportable. Property held through a company or trust is not reported as property, but your interest in the company or trust may be.

Mortgage offset accounts

An offset mortgage links a savings or current account to your loan so the credit balance reduces the interest charged. The savings side is a bank account and is reported at its own highest balance. You do not net the mortgage against it. The mortgage itself is a debt and is not reported. Where the product is a single account that runs overdrawn all year, its maximum value is zero, because a negative value is entered as nil.

Mostly yes, with two real exceptions: the UK State Pension is not reportable on either form, and unvested share grants are not reportable until they vest. For everything else the cautious and common practice is to report. Defined benefit pensions are the one area where practice is openly divided.

Why UK pensions are reported at all

The FBAR rules exempt participants in US tax-qualified plans and owners of IRAs from reporting foreign accounts held inside those plans. There is no matching exemption for foreign pension schemes. A UK registered pension scheme is not a plan under section 401(a) of the US code, so the exemption does not apply. The treaty protects the tax treatment of UK pensions; it does not touch reporting. For Form 8938 the IRS says in terms that an interest in a foreign pension or deferred compensation plan is reportable.

Defined contribution pensions and SIPPs

A self-invested personal pension is the easy case: it is an account in your name, with a provider, holding investments you choose. Report it on both forms. A workplace defined contribution scheme, whether trust-based or a group personal pension, holds an identified pot for you with a value you can look up. We report it. Use the highest value you can reasonably establish from the annual statement or the provider's website.

Count every pot, including ones from old employers. A forgotten pension from a first job is the most common omission we see. The government's pension tracing service will find lost ones.

Defined benefit pensions: the contested case

A defined benefit scheme promises you an income based on salary and service. There is no pot with your name on it, only a share of a pooled fund and a promise from the employer. One body of opinion says there is therefore no "account" to report on the FBAR. The other points out that the form's instructions do not carve out foreign pensions and that the IRS's own internal guidance treats foreign retirement arrangements as reportable.

For Form 8938 the instructions give a workable rule: report the fair market value of your beneficial interest on the last day of the year, and if you do not know or have reason to know that value, report the value of the distributions you received in the year. For a deferred member that is nil; for a pensioner it is the pension paid. The asset is still listed.

For the FBAR, the cautious approach is to list the scheme and use the most recent cash equivalent transfer value where you have one. Many careful preparers leave pure defined benefit promises off the FBAR and report them on Form 8938 only. Either position is defensible if it is deliberate, consistent from year to year and noted on file. What is not defensible is leaving every pension off both forms because the UK calls them tax free.

Our pensions service deals with the tax side: contributions, growth, the lump sum and the treaty elections.

The State Pension

The UK State Pension is not reportable. The IRS says that rights to the foreign equivalent of Social Security are not specified foreign financial assets, and its comparison chart shows them as outside the FBAR too. The payments are still income to be dealt with on the return, where the treaty usually decides which country taxes them.

Share plans and employer share schemes

Work through what you hold and where it sits.

• SAYE (Sharesave). Your monthly savings go into a savings contract with a bank or building society. That is a bank account and it is reportable for the three or five years it runs. The option itself is not.
• Share Incentive Plan. Shares are held for you by the plan's UK trustee, through an administrator that gives you a statement and a login. Opinions differ on whether this is an account or a trust interest. We list it.
• RSUs and options. An unvested grant is a promise, not an account, and stays off the FBAR. For Form 8938, property received for services is treated as yours only once it vests. After vesting, the question is where the shares land. Shares of a US-listed employer delivered to a US broker are not foreign assets at all. Shares held in a UK nominee or corporate sponsored account are in a foreign securities account.
• Paper certificates. Shares in a UK company held directly on the register are not in an account, so they are outside the FBAR. They are specified foreign financial assets for Form 8938.

Founders and senior employees with equity have a longer list of issues than reporting. See our guide to US-UK tax for founders and executives.

Life insurance and investment bonds

A policy with a cash or surrender value is a financial account for the FBAR and a specified asset for Form 8938. That covers whole-of-life cover, with-profits endowments and single-premium investment bonds, onshore or offshore. Report the surrender value. Pure term cover and income protection have no cash value and are not reported. Investment bonds also raise US income tax and PFIC questions that are usually worse than the reporting.

Accounts held through a UK company

A UK limited company is not a US person and does not file an FBAR. You do, for its accounts, if you own more than 50% of it directly or indirectly, because you are treated as having a financial interest. If you own 50% or less but are a director on the bank mandate, you report the same accounts as signature authority. Either way the full balance counts.

On Form 8938 you do not list the company's bank accounts. You report your shares in the company, or, where you already file Form 5471 for it, you tick the box in Part IV to say so. Company ownership brings US rules well beyond reporting; our business and corporate tax planning page covers them.

Trusts

Trusts produce FBAR duties in three ways. A US trustee has signature authority, and usually legal title, over the trust's accounts. A US settlor who is treated as the owner under the grantor trust rules has a financial interest. A US beneficiary has one if they have a present beneficial interest in more than half the assets or receive more than half the current income. A discretionary beneficiary with no fixed entitlement is generally not caught by that test, though a distribution brings its own reporting on Form 3520.

A bare trust for a child is the child's account for these purposes. UK will trusts, life interest trusts and family settlements each need looking at on their facts.

Powers of attorney over a parent's account

If you hold a power of attorney that lets you instruct your parent's bank, you have signature authority over those accounts, used or not. With a lasting power of attorney, the sensible reading is that authority begins once the document is registered and the bank will accept your instructions. Before that, you cannot control anything by communicating with the bank. From that point, report every account the power reaches, in Part IV. Your parent's privacy is not a ground for leaving them off.

For each account you find the highest value it reached during the calendar year, in the currency of the account, then convert that figure to US dollars using the Treasury's published rate for 31 December of that year, and round up to the next whole dollar. You use the year-end rate even if the peak fell in February. A reasonable approximation from periodic statements is enough.

Step 1: find the peak in pounds

The instructions define the maximum value as "a reasonable approximation of the greatest value of currency or nonmonetary assets in the account during the calendar year". You may rely on periodic statements, provided they fairly reflect the high point. In practice:

• Current accounts. Download the year's transactions and sort by running balance, or scan each statement for the highest figure. Paydays, bonuses, house deposits and inheritances are where the peak hides.
• Savings accounts and cash ISAs. The peak is usually the year-end balance, or the balance just before a withdrawal.
• Investment accounts and stocks and shares ISAs. Use the highest of the valuations you are given: monthly, quarterly or year end. You are not expected to reconstruct daily prices.
• Pensions. Use the annual statement value, or the higher of the opening and closing online valuations.
• Insurance policies. Use the surrender value shown on the annual statement.

Remember that the year is 1 January to 31 December. UK statements built around the tax year ending 5 April will straddle two FBAR years.

Step 2: convert at the Treasury year-end rate

The rate to use is the one published by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service in the Treasury Reporting Rates of Exchange for 31 December. It is quoted as units of foreign currency per dollar, so you divide pounds by the rate. For 31 December 2025 the pound was 0.743. For 31 December 2024 it was 0.797.

If the Treasury publishes no rate for a currency, use another verifiable rate and note the source. Form 8938 uses the same Treasury year-end rate, which keeps the two forms consistent.

Step 3: round up and enter

Amounts are entered in whole dollars, rounded up. $15,265.25 becomes $15,266. If the account was overdrawn all year, so the maximum is negative, enter zero.

Worked example

Suppose Hannah, a US citizen in Edinburgh, has four UK accounts in 2025.

Hannah's aggregate is $171,523. She files an FBAR listing all four accounts, including the overdrawn one. She is single and lives abroad, so her Form 8938 threshold is $200,000 at year end or $300,000 at any time. On these figures she is under it and files the FBAR only. If her pension and ISA grow by a fifth, she will file both.

Common valuation questions

Do I report my half of a joint account? No. You report the whole maximum value.

Do I net off transfers between my own accounts? No. Each account is valued separately.

What if I closed the account during the year? It is still reported for that year, at its highest value before closure. Form 8938 asks you to tick a box saying it was closed.

What if I cannot get old statements? Ask the bank; UK banks will usually supply several years on request. If records are truly unavailable, make a reasoned estimate, write down how you arrived at it and keep the note.

Do the FBAR and Form 8938 figures have to match? For the same account they normally will, since both use the maximum value and the same rate. The IRS can compare the two, and both against what your bank reported, so prepare them from one schedule.

You file the FBAR online, free, through FinCEN's BSA E-Filing System, and an individual can do it without creating an account. It is not sent to the IRS and it is not attached to your tax return. There is no paper form for ordinary filers.

Step by step

1. Build your account schedule first. For every account you need the institution's name and address, the account number, the type of account, the highest value in dollars, and for joint accounts the other owner's name and address.
2. Open the individual filing page. Go to the BSA E-Filing page for individual FBAR filers and choose to prepare the report online or to download the PDF version.
3. Complete the cover details. Give the filing a name, enter your email address, and select the calendar year. If the report is late, pick a reason from the list or choose "other" and explain briefly.
4. Part I: about you. Name, date of birth, address and US taxpayer identification number. If you have no Social Security number, the form takes a foreign identification such as a passport number.
5. Item 14. Say whether you have a financial interest in, or signature authority over, 25 or more accounts. If you do, you give summary information only and keep the detail on file.
6. Part II. One entry for each account you own separately.
7. Part III. One entry for each jointly owned account, with the number of other owners and the principal joint owner's details.
8. Part IV. One entry for each account over which you have signature authority but no financial interest, with the owner's details and your title.
9. Sign, save and submit. Save a copy before you submit. The system shows a confirmation and emails an acknowledgement, followed by a BSA Identifier for the accepted report. Keep both.

The IRS gives a plain-English overview on its FBAR page.

Form 114a: spouses and third-party preparers

FinCEN Form 114a is the Record of Authorization to Electronically File FBARs. It is used in two situations. Where a preparer files for you, you sign it to authorise them. Where two US spouses file one joint FBAR, both sign it to nominate the spouse who submits. The form is never sent to FinCEN. You and your preparer keep it, and produce it if FinCEN or the IRS asks.

Amending an FBAR

If you find an error or a missing account after filing, file a new, complete FBAR for that year and tick the "Amend" box. You enter the BSA Identifier of the original report so the two are linked. An amendment replaces the earlier report; it does not add to it, so include every account again. Amend promptly: a corrected report filed before anyone asks is treated very differently from one filed after a letter arrives.

Record-keeping: five years

You must keep records for each reported account for five years from 15 April of the year after the calendar year reported, or from the filing date if later. The records must show the name on the account, the account number, the name and address of the institution, the type of account and the maximum value. A copy of the filed FBAR helps to satisfy this. We also keep the statement page that shows the peak and the conversion working, because that is what an examiner asks for.

How we handle it

US UK Tax Experts prepares the FBAR from the same account schedule as your Form 8938, your Schedule B and your UK Self Assessment, so the interest, the balances and the list of accounts agree across all of them. You sign Form 114a, we file, and you get the confirmation and the working papers. Details are on our FBAR and FATCA reporting service page.

The FBAR is due on 15 April following the calendar year it covers, and every filer gets an automatic extension to 15 October without asking for it. Living abroad does not change either date. For calendar year 2025 the dates were 15 April 2026 and 15 October 2026; for calendar year 2026 they are 15 April 2027 and 15 October 2027.

How the automatic extension works

You do not file a form, tick a box or write a letter. FinCEN's instructions state that it "will grant filers failing to meet the FBAR annual due date of April 15th an automatic extension to October 15th each year". A report submitted on 14 October is on time. A report submitted on 16 October is late, and the system will ask you why. If either date falls on a weekend or US federal holiday, it moves to the next working day.

There is no further extension beyond October, apart from the relief FinCEN announces for areas hit by natural disasters and the narrow signature-authority extension described earlier.

How the FBAR dates sit beside your tax return dates

Form 8938 has no deadline of its own. It is part of the return and is due when the return is due, including any extension you have. The FBAR's October date does not move even if you obtain a further extension for the return to December.

The calendar-year trap

The FBAR and Form 8938 both run on the calendar year. UK paperwork runs on the tax year to 5 April. Your ISA statement, your P60 and your pension statement may all be dated April. You need balances for January to December, and the 31 December value in particular for Form 8938. Download December statements in January, while they are easy to reach. Our guide to filing US and UK tax returns together sets out the full two-country calendar.

What "late" means in practice

A late FBAR is a violation on the day after the October date passes. That does not mean a penalty follows. The IRS has discretion, most late filers who reported their income see no penalty, and there are set procedures for catching up. But the clock for the IRS to assess an FBAR penalty runs for six years from the due date, so a missed year stays live for a long time.

Form 8938, the Statement of Specified Foreign Financial Assets, is the FATCA reporting form that individuals attach to their US tax return. If you live in the UK and file as single or married filing separately, you file it when your specified foreign financial assets are worth more than $200,000 on the last day of the tax year or more than $300,000 at any time during it. The IRS page for Form 8938 has the current form.

The four threshold pairs

There are two tests for each filer, a year-end test and an any-time test, and you file if you exceed either. The amounts depend on where you live and how you file. They are set by regulation and are not indexed; the figures below are from the current Form 8938 instructions.

"Living abroad" has a precise meaning. Your tax home must be in a foreign country, and you must either be a bona fide resident of a foreign country for a full tax year or be physically present abroad for at least 330 full days in a 12-month period ending in the tax year. These are the same tests used for the foreign earned income exclusion. In your year of arrival in the UK you may not yet meet them, and the lower US thresholds apply.

Most Americans married to a British spouse file as married filing separately, or as head of household if they qualify, so the $200,000 and $300,000 figures apply to them, not the joint ones. Yet they still count joint assets at full value. A couple with £180,000 in joint savings and investments puts the American spouse over the line on that alone.

What counts as a specified foreign financial asset

A specified foreign financial asset is either a financial account maintained by a foreign financial institution, or one of a list of foreign assets held for investment outside such an account. The first category is broadly the FBAR list: bank accounts, ISAs, investment accounts, pensions and cash-value insurance. The second is what makes Form 8938 wider:

• shares or securities issued by a non-US company that you hold directly, such as paper certificates or founder shares in a UK limited company;
• an interest in a foreign partnership, including a UK LLP or a carried interest vehicle;
• an interest in a foreign trust or foreign estate;
• a loan you have made to a non-US person, or a bond issued by one;
• an interest in a foreign pension or deferred compensation plan;
• interests in foreign hedge funds and private equity funds, which the FBAR does not reach;
• derivatives and other contracts with a non-US counterparty.

What Form 8938 leaves out that the FBAR includes

Form 8938 does not cover accounts you can only sign on. It does not cover an account at a foreign branch of a US bank, which the FBAR does. And it does not look through a company: you report your shares in a UK company, not its bank accounts. It applies only if you have to file a return at all.

How assets are valued

You report the maximum value of each asset during the year in US dollars. For accounts you can rely on periodic statements. For other assets you may generally use the value on the last day of the year unless you have reason to know it is not a fair estimate of the maximum. Convert at the Treasury rate for the last day of the tax year. For a foreign pension, use the year-end value of your interest, or the distributions received in the year if you cannot determine it. For a discretionary interest in a foreign trust, the value is the distributions received plus the actuarial value of any right to mandatory distributions.

For an unquoted company, a reasonable estimate is acceptable. You are not required to commission a formal valuation.

How it interacts with Forms 3520, 5471, 8621 and 8865

If you already report an asset on one of the specialist international forms, you do not describe it again on Form 8938. That applies to Form 3520 and Form 3520-A for foreign trusts, Form 5471 for foreign corporations, Form 8621 for passive foreign investment companies and Form 8865 for foreign partnerships. Instead you enter in Part IV how many of each form you filed.

The trap is the threshold. For an individual, the value of assets reported on those other forms still counts towards the Form 8938 threshold. So founder shares reported on Form 5471 and funds reported on Form 8621 can push you over, and you then file Form 8938 for your bank accounts and pension even though the largest assets appear only in Part IV.

The statute of limitations

Omitting Form 8938 has a consequence that outlasts the penalty. Normally the IRS has three years from filing to assess more tax. Under section 6501 of the Internal Revenue Code, if a required Form 8938 is missing or incomplete, that period does not start to run until you supply it, and then stays open for three years. Where the failure is due to reasonable cause, the extension is limited to the items connected with the missing information. Otherwise it can hold open the whole return.

Separately, if you leave out more than $5,000 of income attributable to specified foreign financial assets, the assessment period is six years in place of three. That rule applies whether or not you were over the Form 8938 threshold.

Under FATCA, UK banks, building societies, investment platforms and insurers must identify accounts held by US persons and report them every year to HMRC, which passes the data to the IRS. They do this under an agreement between the two governments, not by dealing with the IRS directly. That is why your UK bank asks about your US tax status, and why the IRS can check your FBAR against an independent record.

The UK-US intergovernmental agreement

The UK and the US signed an intergovernmental agreement to implement FATCA on 12 September 2012. HMRC publishes it on its page for the UK-US automatic exchange of information agreement. It is given effect in UK law by the International Tax Compliance Regulations 2015. In return for reporting through HMRC, UK institutions are treated as compliant and escape the 30% US withholding that FATCA imposes on non-participating institutions.

What the institution reports

For each reportable account, the agreement requires:

• your name, address and US taxpayer identification number;
• the account number;
• the name and identifying number of the institution;
• the balance or value at the end of the calendar year, or immediately before closure if it was closed;
• for custodial accounts, the gross interest, gross dividends, other income and gross proceeds from sales paid or credited in the year;
• for deposit accounts, the gross interest paid or credited.

The institution's return goes to HMRC by 31 May after the calendar year. The agreement requires the two governments to exchange the information within nine months of the year end, which means by 30 September.

Note what is and is not sent. The bank reports the year-end balance. Your FBAR reports the maximum. The two figures will differ, and that is expected. What must agree is the list of accounts and the income.

What UK institutions do not report

Annex II of the agreement lists "exempt products" that are not treated as financial accounts for FATCA purposes, so providers do not report them. The list as signed includes registered pension schemes, ISAs, Junior ISAs, child trust funds, Premium Bonds and certain other NS&I products, SAYE schemes, Share Incentive Plans and Company Share Option Plans. HMRC's manual confirms the treatment of registered pension schemes as excluded accounts.

This is the most misunderstood point in the whole subject. The exemption is for the institution. It does nothing for you. Your ISA is a foreign financial account on your FBAR and a specified foreign financial asset on your Form 8938, and its income is taxable on your Form 1040, whether or not your provider tells anyone. People who read that ISAs are "FATCA exempt" and stop reporting them have misread an institutional rule as a personal one.

Self-certification forms, W-9 and W-8BEN

A self-certification is the form a UK institution asks you to complete, at account opening or later, stating where you are tax resident, whether you are a US citizen, and your tax identification numbers. Institutions are required to obtain one for new accounts. Some use their own form. Others use the IRS forms: Form W-9, on which a US person gives their name and Social Security number, or Form W-8BEN, on which a non-US person certifies foreign status.

If you are a US citizen, the truthful answer is that you are tax resident in the UK and also a US person. You give both your National Insurance number and your Social Security number. Signing a W-8BEN when you are a US citizen is a false statement.

What a "FATCA letter" means

A FATCA letter is a request from your bank or platform to confirm your US status. It usually arrives because the institution's records show a US indicator: a US place of birth, a US address or phone number, standing instructions to pay a US account, or a power of attorney in favour of someone with a US address. It can also arrive in a routine review.

It is not a letter from the IRS, and it is not an investigation. It does tell you that your account is about to be reported, if it has not been already. So do two things. Answer it truthfully and on time; if you ignore it, the institution may treat you as reportable anyway, restrict the account or close it. Then check whether your own FBARs and returns are up to date before that report reaches the IRS. If they are not, see the section on missed years.

Why some UK banks and platforms turn Americans away

Nothing in FATCA forbids a UK institution from having American customers. Some decline them because the due diligence and reporting cost more than the account earns. Investment platforms have an added reason: US securities rules restrict offering investments to US persons, while UK and EU retail rules stop UK platforms selling most US-domiciled funds to UK residents. An American in the UK can find that the UK funds on offer are punitively taxed in the US and the US funds are unavailable.

In practice the high-street banks will open current and savings accounts for US citizens who give a Social Security number. The refusals come mainly from smaller savings providers, robo-advisers, some investment platforms and some pension and insurance products. People without a Social Security number have the hardest time, because the institution cannot complete its report without one. If that is you, applying for a number is the first step in getting compliant in any case.

The maximum civil FBAR penalty is $16,536 per missing or late report for a non-wilful violation, and the greater of $165,353 or 50% of the account balance for a wilful one; those are the inflation-adjusted figures for penalties assessed on or after 17 January 2025. The Form 8938 penalty is $10,000, rising by up to $50,000 if you ignore an IRS notice. In practice, most people who missed filings without intent and come forward first pay nothing.

Non-wilful FBAR penalties

The statute, 31 U.S.C. 5321, sets a civil penalty of up to $10,000 for a non-wilful violation. That amount is adjusted for inflation and published in 31 CFR 1010.821. The most recent adjustment we can find is FinCEN's January 2025 inflation adjustment in the Federal Register, which set it at $16,536. The regulation still showed that figure when we checked it in October 2026; no 2026 increase appears to have been published.

Bittner v. United States: per report, not per account

Until 2023 the IRS took the view that each unreported account was a separate non-wilful violation. Alexandru Bittner, a dual citizen living in Romania, filed five years of FBARs late covering 272 account-years, and the government sought $2.72 million. On 28 February 2023 the Supreme Court held, in Bittner v. United States, that the non-wilful penalty accrues per report. His exposure fell to $50,000: five late reports.

For a typical American in the UK with eight accounts and four missed years, that is the difference between 32 possible penalties and four. Bittner applies to non-wilful penalties only. The wilful penalty is still measured by account balance.

Reasonable cause

No non-wilful penalty applies if the violation was due to reasonable cause and the balance in the account was properly reported. Reasonable cause is judged on your facts: what you knew, what you were told, what steps you took, and how quickly you acted once you found out. Relying on a qualified adviser to whom you gave full information helps. Simply not knowing the law, on its own, is a weaker argument, particularly if you ticked "no" to the foreign accounts question on Schedule B.

Wilful FBAR penalties

A wilful violation carries a civil penalty of up to the greater of the inflation-adjusted $100,000, currently $165,353, or 50% of the balance in the account at the time of the violation. It can be assessed for each year. US courts have held that wilfulness for civil purposes includes recklessness and wilful blindness, not only deliberate concealment, and the government need only prove it on the balance of probabilities.

The facts that push a case towards wilful are consistent: moving money to avoid reporting, using nominee names, telling a bank you are not American, telling your own tax preparer you have no foreign accounts, and carrying on after you have been told about the requirement.

Criminal exposure

A wilful failure to file an FBAR, or filing a false one, is a crime under 31 U.S.C. 5322. The maximum is a fine of $250,000 and five years' imprisonment, rising to $500,000 and ten years where the violation accompanies another federal offence or is part of a pattern of illegal activity involving more than $100,000 in 12 months. Prosecutions are reserved for concealment and evasion. An expat with reported salary and an unreported ISA is not who these provisions are used against.

Form 8938 penalties

Failing to file a complete and correct Form 8938 by the due date carries a $10,000 penalty. If the IRS sends you a notice and you still have not filed 90 days later, a further $10,000 accrues for each 30 days, up to an additional $50,000. Married couples filing jointly are treated as one filer and are jointly liable. There is a reasonable cause exception. A foreign law that would penalise disclosure is not reasonable cause.

Two further rules bite on the tax itself. An underpayment of tax attributable to an undisclosed foreign financial asset attracts a 40% accuracy penalty, double the usual rate. And the statute of limitations stays open, as described above.

How penalties are actually applied

The maximums are ceilings, and IRS examiners are told to use judgement. The procedures in the Internal Revenue Manual section on FBAR penalties allow an examiner to close a case with a warning letter in place of a penalty where that is enough to secure future compliance. They set mitigation guidelines that scale penalties to account size, and say that a penalty should be in proportion to the harm.

What decides the outcome is rarely the size of the accounts. It is three things: whether the income from the accounts was reported and the tax paid, whether your conduct was wilful, and whether you came forward before the IRS contacted you. If all three are in your favour, the realistic outcome under the procedures below is no penalty. If the IRS writes first, the penalty-free routes close.

The IRS has six years from the due date of an FBAR to assess a civil penalty, so at any moment six past years are open.

If you have missed FBARs or Form 8938, stop, work out which years and which forms are affected, and use one of the IRS's formal catch-up procedures before the IRS contacts you. Do not simply start filing from this year, and do not quietly send in old forms without the required statements. The right route depends on whether your tax returns were also wrong and whether your conduct was non-wilful.

Route 1: only the FBARs are missing

If you filed your US returns on time, reported all the income from your UK accounts and simply did not file the FBAR, you file the missing FBARs late. You file each one through the BSA E-Filing System, select a reason for late filing and include a statement explaining it. For years the IRS published Delinquent FBAR Submission Procedures, which said no penalty would be imposed where the income had been reported and taxed and the IRS had not made contact. That page was removed from the IRS website in July 2026 and nothing has replaced it, so there is no longer a written assurance of no penalty. Filing promptly, with a clear explanation, before any IRS contact is still the right step. The IRS sets out the current routes among its options for US taxpayers with undisclosed foreign financial assets, and our guide to IRS Streamlined Filing covers the change in detail.

A parallel route, the delinquent international information return procedures, covers a missing Form 8938 or Form 5471 where there is no unreported income. Those forms go in with an amended return and a reasonable cause statement.

Route 2: returns are missing or wrong as well

If you have not been filing US returns at all, or filed them without your UK interest, ISA income or pension, the Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures are the usual answer. Under the foreign offshore version you file:

• the last three years of tax returns, original or amended, with all required information forms;
• the last six years of FBARs;
• Form 14653, a signed certification that your failures were non-wilful, with a narrative of the facts;
• payment of the tax and interest due.

To use the foreign version you must meet a non-residency test: broadly, in at least one of the three years you had no US abode and were physically outside the US for at least 330 full days. If you qualify, the IRS waives the failure-to-file, failure-to-pay, accuracy, information return and FBAR penalties. US residents use the domestic version, which costs 5% of the highest year-end balance of the unreported assets.

With the foreign tax credit or the foreign earned income exclusion, many UK residents owe little or no US tax for the three years. The work is in getting the returns right.

Route 3: the conduct may have been wilful

If there is a real risk your conduct would be seen as wilful, the streamlined route is not available, and a false non-wilful certification is itself an offence. The IRS Criminal Investigation Voluntary Disclosure Practice exists for these cases. It involves a fixed penalty framework and needs a US tax attorney, for legal privilege. We will tell you if we think you are in this territory.

What not to do

• Do not file "quietly". Sending in late FBARs or amended returns without the statements the procedures require gives you none of their protection and can still be picked up.
• Do not file only going forward. A first FBAR listing accounts opened years ago tells the IRS that earlier years were missed.
• Do not close accounts or move money first. Closed accounts are still reportable for the year, the bank has already reported them, and the timing looks bad.
• Do not wait. Every route closes once the IRS opens an examination or writes to you about the missing reports.

Our pillar guide to IRS streamlined filing covers eligibility, the certification and the process in full. Our streamlined filing service prepares the whole submission.

The accounts on your FBAR also drive several entries on the tax return itself: the foreign accounts questions on Schedule B, Form 8621 for most UK funds, possible foreign trust forms, and the income from every account. Reporting an account's existence is only the first layer. The IRS reads the layers together.

Schedule B, Part III

Part III of Schedule B to Form 1040 asks three questions. Line 7a asks whether you had a financial interest in or signature authority over a foreign financial account, and whether you are required to file an FBAR. Line 7b asks for the country. Line 8 asks whether you received a distribution from, or were the grantor of or transferor to, a foreign trust.

You must complete Part III if you have a foreign account, even where your interest and dividends are too small to need Schedule B otherwise. Tax software often skips it by default. A "no" on line 7a, signed under penalty of perjury, when you held UK accounts is one of the facts the government cites when it argues wilfulness. Get this line right.

PFICs and Form 8621

A passive foreign investment company, or PFIC, is a non-US company that earns mainly passive income or holds mainly passive assets. Nearly every UK unit trust, OEIC, investment trust and non-US exchange-traded fund is one. If your stocks and shares ISA, investment account or SIPP holds such funds, you may need Form 8621 for each fund, each year, and the default tax treatment of gains and distributions is harsh.

This is usually a larger problem than the FBAR. The account is reported in a line; the funds inside can take hours and cost real tax. Funds held inside a pension that qualifies under the treaty are generally treated more gently than funds in an ISA. Our PFIC reporting service covers the elections and the calculations.

Foreign trust reporting

Form 3520 reports transactions with foreign trusts and large gifts or inheritances from non-US persons. Form 3520-A is the annual return of a foreign trust with a US owner. The penalties are percentage-based and severe. The question for UK residents is which everyday arrangements count as foreign trusts.

ISAs are generally not trusts. Some UK pensions are trusts in form, and the IRS has issued an exemption from Form 3520 and Form 3520-A for certain tax-favoured foreign retirement and savings trusts that meet set conditions. Whether a particular SIPP or scheme meets them needs checking, not assuming. Family settlements, will trusts and some employee benefit trusts do need these forms. A gift or inheritance of more than $100,000 in a year from a non-US person, such as a British parent, is reported on Form 3520 even though it is not taxable.

The income itself

Interest on current and savings accounts, including ISA interest and Premium Bond prizes, is taxable on your US return in the year it is credited. So are dividends and realised gains in an ISA or investment account. Because the UK does not tax ISA income, there is no UK tax to credit against the US tax on it. That is why an ISA is rarely efficient for an American, and why the US tax on a large one can be real money.

How the US and UK charges fit together, through the foreign tax credit and the treaty, is covered in our guides to US and UK tax returns and the US-UK double taxation treaty. Our US federal return service prepares the Form 1040 and everything attached to it.

Companies and partnerships

If the FBAR lists a UK company's accounts because you own more than half of it, you almost certainly owe Form 5471 as well, and US rules on the company's own profits apply. A UK partnership or LLP interest can need Form 8865. These forms carry their own $10,000 penalties and are a subject in themselves.

An FBAR filing service builds the complete list of your reportable accounts, establishes each one's maximum value from evidence, converts it correctly, files FinCEN Form 114 and Form 8938 where needed, and makes sure the figures agree with your tax return. The form takes minutes. The value lies in the account list and in knowing which contested items to include.

What we do

US UK Tax Experts prepares the US return and the UK return from one file, so the two agree. For FBAR and FATCA reporting that means:

1. Account discovery. We work through every category in this guide with you, including old pensions, children's accounts, employer mandates and accounts you can sign on for relatives.
2. Thresholds. We test the $10,000 FBAR threshold and the correct Form 8938 pair for your filing status and residence, for each person in the household.
3. Valuation. We take maximum values from statements, convert at the Treasury year-end rate and keep the working.
4. Filing. We file the FBAR under your Form 114a authorisation and attach Form 8938 to your return.
5. Cross-checking. We reconcile the account list to Schedule B, Form 8621 and the interest and dividends on both the US and UK returns.
6. Earlier years. If past filings are missing, we tell you which catch-up route fits before anything is sent.

If you are looking for an FBAR accountant in the UK, email hello@usuktaxexperts.com or use the contact page. We reply within one working day. Our services page lists everything we prepare, including UK Self Assessment.

What to send a preparer

• A list of every non-US account open at any point in the year, including closed, dormant and joint accounts.
• For each: the institution's name and address, the account number or reference, and the account type.
• Statements covering 1 January to 31 December, or a transaction download with running balances.
• The 31 December balance or valuation for each, for Form 8938.
• Annual statements for each pension, ISA, investment account and insurance policy.
• For joint accounts: the other owner's full name and address.
• For accounts you can only sign on: the owner's name and address, and your role.
• Details of any company, partnership or trust you own, control or benefit from.
• Last year's FBAR and Form 8938, if any, so accounts can be carried forward and closures noted.
• Any letter from a bank about your US status.

Common mistakes

• Testing each account against $10,000. The test is on the total.
• Using the 31 December balance. The FBAR wants the highest value of the year.
• Converting at the rate on the day of the peak. Use the Treasury year-end rate.
• Reporting half of a joint account. Report all of it.
• Leaving off ISAs and pensions because they are tax free in the UK, or "FATCA exempt". Neither label affects your own reporting.
• Forgetting signature authority. Employer accounts, a parent's account and a club treasurer's account all count.
• Forgetting the children. A US-citizen child with more than $10,000 across their accounts needs their own FBAR.
• Assuming the tax return covers it. The FBAR is never attached to Form 1040, and Form 8938 does not replace it.
• Assuming the software covers it. Many consumer tax programs do not file the FBAR at all.
• Dropping closed accounts. An account closed in March is reportable for that year.
• Ticking "no" on Schedule B line 7a. This turns an oversight into evidence.
• Listing accounts on one form and not the other. The IRS can compare the FBAR, Form 8938 and your bank's FATCA report.
• Catching up informally. Late filings belong inside the IRS procedures, with the statements they require.

If your affairs involve a business, a move between the two countries or a larger estate, the reporting is one part of a wider picture. Our cross-border tax planning page explains how we approach that.